


i will heal the ruins left inside you

by isignedupforthis



Category: Lovely Little Losers, Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Blood, Cannibalism, Character Death, Death, Every Male Character Dies Basically and It's Great, F/F, Killing, Mild Gore, Monsters, Resurrection, Violence, Witches, in general, people die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 10:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6075600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isignedupforthis/pseuds/isignedupforthis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Hero's Birthday, Ursula brings Hero back from the dead. Only, Hero's slightly different now.</p><p>Inspired by Jennifer's Body, All Cheerleaders Die, and every other terrible teen horror-comedy with heavily homoerotic and feminist themes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will heal the ruins left inside you

**Author's Note:**

> “Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair  
> And I eat men like air.”  
> –Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"

All Hero could remember was the hunger.  
  
It first came in the falling, deep and swift into Beatrice’s arms at her birthday party. Struggling for breath as she staggered along the cold tiles of her own home. Claudio’s words clawing, clawing, clawing at her chest. All the people, all the boys staring as she turned from girl to whore to tragedy before their very eyes. In a matter of minutes, she was left gasping for something she couldn’t reach. Hero was alone.

* * *

Then was the darkness. Next came the wakening.  
  
A gentle voice, faint and familiar to her, called for Hero. Her eyes fluttered open, and for a moment, she was content, looking into bespectacled almond eyes, warm and brown. Everything else was too blurred to see and too booming to hear. _Ursula_ .  
  
But then she remembered the hunger.  
  
Except it had deepened, lowered from her lungs to the pit of her stomach, and it felt…different.  
  
The bedroom fell into focus, and the blurred figures became Beatrice and Benedick. The sound became understandable. Beatrice. Her cousin was trying to talk to her, but Hero couldn’t bother to hear beyond words and phrases.  
  
“ _You were gone...weren't breathing..._ _”_  
  
She craved something, but whatever it was, she couldn’t quite place it.  
   
“ _Brought back.”_  
   
She darted her eyes around, sensing it was nearby.  
“ _Some kind of witchcraft.”_  
   
She needed to listen to Beatrice. She needed to pay attention. No, she needed _it._  
  
_“…Feed.”_  
   
She looked to her cousin. She looked beyond her cousin. That was it.  
   
Hero pounced. Hero bit. Hero fed.  
   
Hero had never felt so free.  
   
But as soon as it had begun, it had ended. She felt herself being pulled away on both sides, ripped away from it. Her eyes glazed over, staring at the ceiling as her body was dragged back to her bed from where she had jumped. Hero heard sputtering, like her own at the party.  
  
_How long ago was the party?,_ Hero thought hazily. It felt like it had been ages ago. Now satisfied of her hunger, she was suddenly aware of all of the questions and feelings she had. _What was going on? Where was Claudio? What did Beatrice say about…_ witchcraft?  
   
Her body fell to the bed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Beatrice drag a dark-haired figure across the floor. His suit jacket was shredded on one side, stained darker than the surrounding material.  
  
_Benedick. That’s Benedick. Did I do_ that _to Benedick?_  
   
Ursula took her by the shoulders. “Hero, are you okay?”  
   
Her tongue felt heavy, and her mouth tasted metallic and strange. But she managed to speak: “…Yes.”  
   
“I need you to listen to me very carefully, Hero,” Ursula’s voice was still calm. “What you have, you need to be able to control yourself.”  
_What do I have?_  
   
“I know that you’re probably very scared right now, but it’s okay.” Ursula moved her hand from Hero’s shoulder to her scalp, running her delicate fingers through her hair. “It’s going to be okay.”  
   
She explained it all to Hero. After the party, Bea and Benedick forced everyone out of the house. Ursula was with Hero when she stopped breathing. She tried to perform CPR, she really did. But nothing was helping. That was when Ursula realized that there was only one way that she could help.  
   
“I waited for Beatrice to come back,” Ursula told her. “Those were the longest five minutes of my entire life.”  
   
She only told Beatrice what she needed to know; Ursula knew how to bring back Hero. Her cousin didn’t bother to ask how.  
   
“Do you want to know exactly what I did, Hero?” Ursula asked. “You have the right to know, but it’s alright if you don’t want to.”  
   
Hero didn’t want to know. The fact that she had stopped breathing was too much already. She shook her head, slowly but surely. Ursula nodded.  
   
“Well, to summarize, I brought you back from the dead. But you’re not entirely… _human_ anymore.”  
   
“What?”  
   
“I’m sorry, I can’t explain it. I don’t know _what_ you are, exactly. But whatever it is, it’s not human.”  
   
Hero swallowed. She hadn’t realized that there was lump in her throat until then.  
   
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I thought it was the only option,” Ursula apologized, stroking her hair more frantically. “If you were alive, I would have asked you first. But I couldn’t, and I didn’t want you to, I _couldn’t let you_ —“  
   
Beatrice entered the room again. Hero’s cousin still wore the tan and white dress from the party, only Hero noticed that the sleeves, along with her hands and arms, were red. Bea wiped her forehead, staining her forehead with the stuff as well. She ran across the bedroom to Hero, grabbing her face and pushing Ursula to the side.  
   
“Hero, how are you? What are you feeling? Are you okay?” Beatrice pressed. She turned to Ursula, raising her voice. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?”  
   
Ursula’s voice was still steady. Hero had rarely ever heard her friend’s voice uneven. “How’s Benedick? Is he still bleeding?”  
   
“Ben’s fine. It looked worse than it was, I bandaged him and he’s resting in the bathtub.” Beatrice narrowed her eyes. “But _what_ ? Did you _do_ ? To my _cousin???_ ”  
   
“It’s too complicated to explain.” Ursula answered shortly. “You just have to feed her.”  
   
“With what? _People?_ ” Beatrice shouted. “ _You want me to feed her people?!?”_  
   
“Boys.” Hero realized. Her cousin and friend looked at her, surprised that she had spoken. She surprised herself even more with what she said next. “I need to feed on boys.”  
   
Ursula raised her eyebrows, contemplating. “That would make sense why she didn’t try to attack either of us, Beatrice. And the reason that she’s like this, it’s because of Claudio and Pedro. _Boys_ .”  
   
Hero could see in her cousin’s eyes that this was too much for her. This _was too much_ .  
   
“I need to sit down,” Beatrice stepped away from Hero. “I need to—“  
   
“You need to go check on Ben downstairs, “ Ursula interrupted, her voice more demanding. “I’m going to make sure that the charms I put on Hero are stable. Or, at least, as stable as they can be.”  
   
Beatrice’s eyes dulled. She repeated in a monotone:” I need to check on Ben downstairs. You’re going to make sure that the charms you put on Hero are stable. Or, at least, as table as they can be.” Hero’s jaw dropped. Beatrice left the room, almost mechanically.  
   
Ursula turned to Hero again. She gave Hero a soft, sad, apologetic smile. “Sorry. I usually don’t…do that.”  
   
Hero nodded. “It’s okay. I get it.” There was silence. Hero felt her head sink into the pillow beneath her. It was soft, yet cold. So very cold. She was so tired. So very tired. She shifted, hoping her head gestured towards the nightstand besides her. “Ursula, could you please read to me?”  
   
Her friend nodded, picking up the first book on the stack that had piled up during the year. It was Beatrice’s copy of _Frankenstein_ . She opened to the page that Beatrice had left marked.  
   
" _’_ _I was nourished with high thoughts of honor and devotion_ ,’” Ursula read. “‘ _But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone._ ’” She looked up to Hero. “I really don’t think that this is appropriate to read, given the circumstances.”

Hero kept her eyes on the ceiling. “Keep going.”

‘ _It is true that I am a wretch,_ ’” Ursula continued. “‘ _I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept, and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing.’_ ” She put the book down. “Are you sure about this?”

“ _Please_.” Hero felt her eyelids begin to weigh on her.

“' _Y_ _ou hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself I look on the hands which executed the deed; think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment when_ _these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.’_ ” Ursula closed the book. “That’s it. That’s the end of the chapter.” Ursula turned off the night lamp and pressed her lips, chapped and light, to Hero’s forehead. “Sleep well.”  
  
Hero did not sleep. She laid there, alone in the dark, wondering what it all meant. _Am I still myself? Am I a monster? What must they all think of me?_ She dreamed of herself with fangs instead of her pearly white teeth and claws instead of her pink manicured nails. It was repulsive…but what did that make her? More monster than girl? Hero did not sleep. Hero could not sleep. Hero would not sleep. Monsters like her, they never slept.

* * *

It returned to Hero slowly, the hunger.

She hadn’t eaten anything as filling since Benedick (who was still alive, but slightly shaken) at the party, and even then, she wasn’t satisfied. She could feel it stirring in her, stronger than it was before.  
  
Beatrice and Ursula tried their best to help. (Ben was also helpful, but was adamant about being in a room with her again, which she could understand.) They took turns caring for her, staying with her while she remained bedridden. Leo didn’t bother them, blissfully unaware of the circumstances and refusing to look at his sister after her party. Hero probably would have been more hurt by this if she didn’t understand it all too well.  
  
If it were him, she wouldn’t bother either.  
  
_No_ , she had to remind herself. _I would have most certainly helped._ Hero had had a much more difficult time reminding herself to be kind these days. It tired her, but she chose kindness regardless. It kept her human.

Having Ursula around her reminded her of this. She’s so good to Hero, reading to her, talking to her, trying to find blood substitutes for her. Once a day, Ursula found Hero’s pin cushion she used for sewing, and purposely pricked and squeezed her finger. As the blood dripped down her hand, she would nurse Hero.  
  
“I know it’s not what you need, but maybe it’ll help,” Ursula lifted Hero’s chin and slipped her bloody finger between her friend’s teeth.  
Sometimes it helped the hunger, sometimes it did not. But still she fed.  
About a week into this routine, Ursula broke the usual silence that came after Hero finished feeding. “If you had the chance to choose, when I cast the spell that made you like this, between being like this or being…what do you think you would have chosen?”  
  
This took Hero aback. No one had ever bothered to ask her that. A part of her felt that she should insist that she was grateful for the chance she had, that it was silly for Ursula to suggest that she wasn’t. But she found herself saying: “I honestly don’t know.” She looked to Ursula, biting her lip. “If you were in my place, what would you choose?”  
  
“Am I myself in this scenario, or am I you?” Ursula teased. Hero laughed. It had been so long since she’d laughed.  
  
“Does it make a difference?”  
  
“Well, if I were you, I would definitely be conflicted,” Ursula explained. “I’d be mortified because of the whole…party incident. And not to mention, I’d be terrified because I wouldn’t know what living after _not living_ would feel like. And the part of bloodsucking…wouldn’t be my cup of tea.”  
  
“Is there a ‘ _but’_ coming? Please tell me there’s a ‘ _but’_ ”  
  
Ursula smiled. “But I wouldn’t want to leave everyone I knew, everyone who I knew loved me in spite of all of the shit with Claudio, behind. I wouldn’t be able to do that to them.”  
  
It was everything that Hero feared and contemplated to herself at night.  
She observed her friend, taking care with her next words. “And if you were you?”  
   
“I think I would still choose to live,” Ursula responded. “Because as shitty as the circumstances would be, at least it wouldn’t be awful forever.” She stroked Hero’s cheek with her still red thumb. “Try to remember that, Hero. It won’t be like this forever.”  
   
Hero nodded. She didn’t deserve Ursula, and she knew it. But it was nice to pretend like she did.  
   
Ursula removed herself from Hero’s bed. “I’ll go clean up my hand in the bathroom. Bea’s downstairs, making sandwiches with Ben, if you need either of us.”  
   
“What do you think of those two together, Ursula?”  
   
She grinned. “I was totally right about them.” She closed the bedroom door.  
Hero closed her eyes, and tried to dream of sandwiches. She heard the door _click_ open again, and smiled.  
   
“That was quick,” she said.  
   
“Not nearly quick enough,” a gruff voice replied.  
   
Her eyes snapped open. It was him, at her doorframe, looking like he did the last time she saw him. Well, not exactly; Claudio looked worn down, his eyes tired, but still piercingly green to her from across the room.  
   
She felt her stomach churn. Not because the boy who had ruined her was standing mere feet away from her, with no one else in the room. _Oh no_ .  
   
A _boy_ was standing mere feet away from her, with _no one else in the room_ .  
_Oh no._

“W-w-what are you doing here, Claudio?” Hero muttered, very pointedly looking away from him.  
   
“The front door was unlocked.”  
   
“ _Why are you here_ ?”  
   
“I just need to know _why_ , Hero,” Claudio stepped further into the room. “Why did you cheat on me? What did I do wrong?”  
   
She tried not to concentrate on his smell as he moved closer to her. He wore cologne to cover a lack of showering. And his blood, _oh his blood—_  
   
“I didn’t cheat on you, Claudio.” Hero choked out. “I w-w-would _never_ —“  
   
“ _Liar!_ ” Claudio yelled. “Not only are you a _slut_ but you can’t even be _honest about fucking another g-“_ His words were cut short. Claudio gasped, looking chest, metal and blood ripping and slowly staining his red and black striped t-shirt. He fell to his knees, blood dripping down his chin. Behind him stood Beatrice, clutching a bloody sandwich knife. She stepped over the coughing Claudio and grabbed Hero.  
   
“Are you okay?”  
   
“ _What on earth?!? BEATRICE?!?”_  
   
Ursula rushed into the room, her hand wrapped. She looked to Claudio’s writhing body, then to Beatrice’s clutched knife, then to Hero.  
   
“Well,” Ursula commented. “This is—“  
   
“What happens when you leave Hero alone!” Beatrice exclaimed. “Why the fuck was she in here by herself? You should have been here!”  
   
“Beatrice, calm down,” Hero warned. She felt nauseous, and the room was spinning. “She was just—“  
Hero was cut off by Benedick calling down the hall.  
   
“I know that I said I wasn’t going to come into this room ever again, but here I go! What in bloody hell is going on—“ As soon as Benedick entered the room, he saw Beatrice with the knife, then registered Claudio’s corpse.  
   
He let out a shriek. “D-d-did you do that?”  
   
“Yeah, so?” Beatrice answered, hand on hip.  
   
Ben grabbed the nearest pillow, and held it to his front. Hero assumed it was for protection in case she attacked him. “I…I have to go home now.” He darted out of the room.  
   
“As I was saying,” Ursula said. “This isn’t completely terrible for us.”  
   
“Not completely terrible?” Beatrice noted sarcastically. “I just _killed Claudio_ .”  
   
“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about who Hero’s next meal is.” Ursula commented.  
Beatrice’s face fell. “You can’t be serious.”  
   
“Do you have any better ideas?”  
   
Hero’s cousin glanced at her. “Would you be okay with it?”  
   
She nodded. _Yes, yes, yes. More than okay. Ecstatic. Delighted. Thrilled. Satisfied._  
   
“I guess,” Hero whispered. The scent was becoming too much for her. She _needed_ this. “…I’d like to be alone though.”  
   
“I get it.” She gestured towards the tool she killed the boy with. “Besides, I need to clean this knife. And finish my sandwich.” Beatrice began to leave the room. “Ursula, are you coming?”  
   
“I should probably stay,” Ursula explained. “Just to make sure that Hero’s okay afterwards.”  
   
Beatrice exchanged a look with Hero. Her cousin nodded. Beatrice shrugged. “If Hero’s okay with it, so am I.” She closed the door.  
   
And with that, Hero feasted.  
   
She made sure to eat his heart first.

* * *

 It grew stronger in her, the hunger.  
   
She stood at Claudio’s grave the first time she left her home after the party. Beatrice and Ursula convinced her that it was the right thing to do, and joined her in the mourning. But words like _right_ and _wrong_ , she realized, had never been as confusing to her as they were during the funeral.  
   
What Claudio did at the party was wrong. Everything that had come as a result of the party was wrong. Her condition, her _hunger_ , came as result of the party. The more time that passed, the more the hunger became her. Therefore, she was wrong. Her existence was wrong. Everything was wrong.  
   
But then, why did she feel so right when she fed?  
   
Hero could hear the whispers around her. _Slut. Whore. Skank._ Everyone still thought that she had cheated on Claudio. But little did they know, she was so much worse.  
   
There was no body for Claudio’s parents to bury. She wished that they could put her in his plot of land, so she could dig her toes in the earth and never deal with the monstrosity that was her life again.  
   
She felt Ursula grab her hand. “Hero, can we talk?”  
   
They walked to the forest. Hero noticed that Ursula’s hand, almost always warm and dry, was clammy in her own.  
   
Ursula stopped and dropped Hero’s hand. “I can’t do this anymore.”  
   
Hero felt her stomach drop. Ursula had finally realized what she was, that she couldn’t be fixed, that she couldn’t be cured. It was only going to be a matter of time, Hero knew. But for it to happen so soon after Claudio’s funeral? It seemed cruel coming from her friend, even for something like Hero.  
   
Hero took a breath. “I know.”  
   
Ursula blinked, her eyes behind her glasses growing wide. “You do?”  
   
Hero smiled softly, sadly, and apologetically. “You don’t have to pretend like we’re friends anymore. We both know that we’re not. I’m a…Well, I don’t know what I am. But things like me? You can’t care for them.”  
   
“Hero, what are you saying?”  
   
“I’m tired of it, Ursula. I’m tired of depending on you and Beatrice for everything. And you’re tired, too. I get it.”  
   
Ursula furrowed her eyebrows, shaking her head. She stepped hesitantly toward Hero and took her face between her hands. “I could never get tired of you, Hero.”  
   
And Ursula kissed Hero.  
   
Her lips were tender and gentle, like everything about Ursula. Hero wanted to take every part of her friend (girlfriend?) in, her smell, her taste, her _everything_ , and take it for herself.  
   
_What a greedy girl I am,_ Hero thought.  
   
She broke the kiss. “I can’t.”  
   
“Why?”  
   
“I’m a _monster_ , Ursula.”  
   
“And I’m the witch who made you a monster,” Ursula finished.  
   
“You know what I mean.”  
   
“I know. And I don’t care.” Ursula cupped Hero’s face. She was too good for Hero. Ursula had to realize that. “Do you remember when you asked me if I would choose to live if I was in your situation?”  
   
“You said it wouldn’t be awful forever.”  
   
“And it won’t,” Ursula stroked her cheek. “Because we’ll have each other.”  
   
Before Hero could respond, she heard the leaves rustle. Someone was coming, she could smell them. She took Ursula by the hand. “We have to hide.”  
   
They crouched by a group of bushes. The scent grew stronger. It was two boys, one who smelled purely like blood, the other like an odd mixture of blood and hair product.  
   
It couldn’t be.  
   
“I can’t believe you tricked Claudio into thinking that Hero slept with Robbie _just to get to me._ ” Pedro taunted his brother, John. “Mum and Bill are going to kill you.”  
   
“I didn’t think he was going to _die._ ” John responded.  
   
“That’s not our fault.”  
   
“I can’t believe you forced a girl to film it Hero’s birthday.”  
   
“That was a mistake.”  
   
“Can you believe that she showed up? What an attention whore.”  
   
“No worse than Beatrice. She’s far worse.”  
   
Hero’s stomach turned. And not in a sick way.  
   
“ _Can I…?_ ” Hero mouthed to Ursula.  
   
“ _Go ahead.”_  
   
“ _I love you._ ” Hero blew a kiss.  
   
Ursula caught it.  
   
Hero pounced.

* * *

She was not just a monster. She was not just a girl. She was not just her hunger.  
   
She was Hero. And she was not alone.  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
   
 


End file.
